Picture of Triumphs
by ebonbird
Summary: At the age of five, Ororo Munroe was orphaned in Cairo, Egypt.


Title: Pictures of Triumph  
Archive: E-me for permission  
Rating: PG  
Summary: When Ororo was four, a war broke out and orphaned her. She made do with a little help. Some of it was from friends...  
Disclaimer: Ororo Munroe, Storm, and the Shadow King belong to Marvel. None of these characters are belong to me.

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-January-

On the West Nile, just southwest of Garden City, are villas built by opportunistic Cairenes enriched by the British protectorate at the turn of the last century. Their thick walls, overgrown by grape and bougainvillea vine, keep out the dust raised by livestock and the passage of exhaust-belching motor vehicles. Behind the walls are homes and their gardens. Despite their serenity and cleanliness, these gardens are not the opposite of Cairo, rather they are its hidden heart - hearts - calm and peaceful as love of beauty and privacy wed to elan can make them. The air is layered with the heady perfume of jasmine, the penetrating sweetness of henna, and the fair assault of roses in bloom; carefully guided water passes through pipes and fountains in basins, spills over gravel, and pools beneath rocks. The air of prosperity surrounds even the villa belonging to Saeed al-Wardi, a merchant, for all that it wants painting and the inner doors are rotting off their hinges. Saeed al-Wardi is something of a miser, you see.

The clay-stained, burlap dress of the beggar girl - called Ororo - lying on the roof, is in better condition than the roof's mismatched tiles. In the past, Saeed al-Wardi has pronounced the roof beneath the tiles sound, and it only ever rains in winter if at all. In the past, when the conversations about the state of the roof had taxed his patience, his pitch never approached the stridency that now pushes his words up out of the wind traps and into the beggar girl's ears.

There is a violent, violet-white thundercrack in the hazy heavens.

The aftershocks shake the dust out of the air. The sky is a brief blue. Then darkness, which is rain, weeps out of the sky, scrubbing it clean. Startled, Ororo scuttles for cover, dislodging a tile with her arm. She grabs it before it clatters to the garden grounds. Setting the tile back into its place, she pouts and twists her lips into a wavery line. Rain. She's lucky for the overhang that gives her shelter. Mud flows in the streets. Beyond the walls, nothing can be seen except cars and lost donkeys standing here and there in places where they are protected from the torrents gushing out of the sky. 

The house of Saeed al-Wardi is in an uproar. Worthless Wulib dared to send Anbar, Saeed al-Wardi's firstborn, a letter - one with misspellings.

Saeed al-Wardi is not pleased. It is not only that Wulib the Insolent praised Anbar's honey-colored eyes -- eyes that Wulib should not have known were honey-colored, because of the burqa she wears in public -- but that not only did Wulib the Incompetent misconjugate 'eyes', he misspelled Anbar's full name. 

His voice rises and falls, louder than that of the wind and rain of the storm. His voice penetrates with the stressed and formal cadence of a man given to great oral expression but unfamiliar with true anger. He shouts and groans, cursing as he would only among men, but mostly he is wordless as he grabs at the air and at his person. His white silk galabiya is rumpled from where he has pulled at it. His silver-embroidered, blue skullcap sits awry on his head. Fingers stained yellow by honey-soaked pipe tobacco and bearing a silver-looking ring each, crumple and twist the letter from Wulib the Ignorant. He shakes the letter at the ceiling. He wrings it open, holding it before the veiled eyes of his wife who he knows does not read. She, Wadiaa, huddles in the corner, the abaya he requires his female relations to wear when out of their quarters -- he imports the silk from Pakistan - is skimming over the lush curves of her hidden body.

"DO YOU SEE THIS!" he is so unused to screaming that his voice is hoarse and thin. He coughs. Clears his throat. Saeed al-Wardi intones, "How did this come into the house?"

When her eyes meet his in helplessness from the slit of her satin-edged burqa, he screams for his children, daughters all, to attend. They flutter in from the arched hallway where they were crouched, listening. Their slippered feet whisper over the cool, sugar-brown, white-edged octagonal tiles as they enter in order of their births. Like their mother, they are dressed in last year's fabrics. Anbar leads. Her eyes, glimpsed between the khlalah-green borders of her veil, are indeed like honey - Wulib the Shameless knew that much. All the women of the family have eyes of that color, only Anbar's are like honey enriched by palm wine and her eyelashes are shamefully long. Fatima follows Anbar, as graceful as a twenty yards of watered silk dropped over a high balcony into a jasmine-scented garden at dawn. Guileless Onul follows closely behind, her eyes glimmer. It is to be expected that she is about to cry. Mahtoub has been taking his measure while he fixed his glared at Onul. When he looks at Mahtoub, his fourth child, the one that should have been a boy, of course her eyes are demurely cast down and she is the picture of appropriate femininity. Saeed al-Wardi must look down and down and down before he can see little Basimah, who comes in last. Like her name, Basimah is always smiling. Fatima and Onul hide Basimah and her smiles behind them while their father rages at Anbar specifically and them in general. They are fixing Basimah, who is allowed to go about in only a long tunic, pants and the filmiest of dark blue hijabs. The veil is worked in delicate embroidery of darker blue, little bees sewn by Fatima's quick fingers, and is falling off her head. Her hair is a deeply burnished brown, going blonde at the tips. She is eight. 

While Fatima rearranges Basimah's veil properly behind the weeping Onul, Mahtoub, is debating whether or not to inform her father that Wulib's letter came to the house by way of the little beggar girl Basimah has disobeyed him by playing with.

Little Ororo, the beggar girl that is Basimah's dearest playmate, found shelter from the storm beneath two overhangs on Saeed al-Wadir's roof. Hearing the commotion, she rolls on the mismatched tiles of Saeed al-Wadir's roof, giddy with laughter. The discomfort caused by the falling rain is nothing to her in her hilarity.

Wulib ibn-Sweilem, a taxi-driver like no other, sent the letter through her.

"Mahtoub?" Saeed al-Wardi asks, of his daughter who never appears to be spying on her siblings, but knows almost everything regarding everyone in the family.

Ororo takes this as her cue to leave. She scampers across the tiled roof, on feet and hands. Her rough, bare feet find brief purchase on tiled roof as she scampers soundlessly over the tiles. The roof is watertight but old. Many of the tiles upon it are loose, but Ororo's reflexes are as good as a rat's. She slips her way to the ledge, launches herself into the rain washed air and fastens herself to the slippery, tri-color peeling bark of the sycamore tree that rises higher than the villa. Rain being so rare in Cairo, she is unprepared for the involuntary speed of her descent. The breath escapes her lungs with a woof, and she kicks and flails as she slides down the length of the branch. At the branch's origin she stops hard. It is a painful shock, but training overcomes instinct and she maintains her hold. She swings, reaching for the trunk with her feet, then, thinking otherwise, slaps off the trunk with her feet. She swings back, and at the proper moment she releases her hold of the branch. Executing a neat flip, she lands in a muddy puddle. Clots of stinking mud rag up her legs. She smiles and holds out her arms for the admiration of no one.

The rain vanishes. The clouds clear. Humidity soaks everything, adding to the wet-heat rolling landward from the Nile.

Ororo takes the long way out of al-Wadir's guardian. She smells the roses, and makes faces at the insects living beneath their petals. Tucked in the rope that serves as Ororo's belt, in a scrap of brown paper, is half of Basimah's morning taamiya. As she walks, Ororo eats it so rapidly, she ends up chewing on paper for a bit before realizing that it's not food. Once it is done, she is still hungry. Passing the kitchen window, she takes a pumpkin turnover from the counter near the window, and crams half into her mouth. She tucks the other into the top portion of her ragged tunic, and skims up the wall and into the streets.

There is a beat-up Fiat, once red, popping and chuckling as it farts immense greasy clouds of exhaust. Ororo frowns at it, and trots down the street. The driver of the taxi, a full-faced, beardless man, with immense teeth and a quizzical brow, shows surprise when Ororo passes him. Hunching over the wheel of the car, he takes hold of the sticky gearshift and wrestles the transmission out of park. The car stalls. 

"Tell me," he yells out of his car window. "Did Anbar get my letter?"

"Yes, and her father did, too!" Ororo yells back, and she breaks into a run.

She pelts over a bridge onto the mainland and into the exhilarating traffic. People, livestock and machines jostle for progress along the muddy road. Most little girls would be pushed about by the traffic, but as hard as the crowd jostles her, Ororo juke-steps around obstacles and darts through the slimmest allowance. At times she crouches on hand and foot, climbing her way nimbly through the empty undercurrents of the river of traffic. Her deft little hands are feeling and squeezing purses and moneybelts as she goes. She hardly thinks of it, what she's doing, as she makes her way to the airport. 

She hitches a ride on a truck carrying pigeons into the city. Once she's climbed a swaying bank of crates, she latches on with fingers and toes and talks down into the crates, hailing the pigeons nearest her and asking after their relations. She listens to the coos and gurgles with polite attention. Because they are only pigeons, she listens only so long before offering news of her family. The pigeons gurgle and coo as they listen, and Ororo amuses herself by telling them stories about made-up relations. When that becomes boring, Ororo latches her hand on either side of the high wooden guard rail and leans forward. Her hair streams out from beneath her head-wrap. It is filthy, like tarnished silver, black and dull in some parts, but mostly the color is uneven.

It isn't until she gets off at the airport that she notices that some of the pigeons are dead.

At the airport, Ororo hops from foot to foot amongst the other urchins, her hands held out to the pale foreigners. She is only one of dozens of beggar children with the right to beg in front of the airport. 

All the foreigners know how to say 'Imshi imshi' as they hurry off, but often they toss money at the children anyway.

"Look, Tony," says a harshly perfumed woman staring at Ororo though she is pressed against her male companion. The woman wears a veiled hat, but her shirt is sleeveless, and her skirt is brief. "Tony, this one is blind." The effect of her words is instantaneous, suddenly no less than four children have inserted themselves in the narrow lip of space between Ororo and the perfumed woman. Ororo applies knees and elbows to good effect, better than that of the four children, and she is faster. Ororo forces a grubby paw open and up before the woman, who blinked and thus missed the scuffle that brought Ororo closer to her.

"Two guineas, Tony, two guineas." She turns her face into Tony's shoulder. Who also stares at Ororo's face. He removes a two guinay note from his back pocket. Handing it to Ororo, he smiles broadly, tensely. "Here you go, you little thief." Turning his back on her, he wonders aloud, "...Blue eyes, Doris, not blind ones."

The children at her back have gathered themselves and in unison shove her into the British couple. In seconds it is done.

Ororo yells curses at the other beggars as she hops clear of Tony's steadying hand. She dashes out into traffic, heedless of oncoming taxis and trucks. Tony's wallet swings from side to side inside her tunic, jostling with the others she picked up that day. The music of Cairo buoys her on her journey. Omm Kolthoum wails of love and religious ecstasy from apartment windows, cafe doorways and taxicabs.

In a shadowed doorway near a superior taamiya stand, Ororo counts her winnings. The vendor is a wiry man who, Ororo knows from experience, is not much for running. Ororo removes her head covering and plaits her knotted hair. She swirls it about her head, and secures that by wrapping the head wrap tightly around that. She brushes her hand along the ground, and rubs her hand on her face, shading her chin and mouth.

Her walk changes as she approaches the taamiya stand. The hot oil in the vat bubbles and froths audibly. The chick-pea patties bob among golden bubbles. The vendor toasts bread, shammys, on a grill made from half an oil drum. His blade flies as he slices onion and tomato. Ororo's mouth salivates. The chick pea batter is faintly pink.

"One, taamiya please," says Ororo, holding up two coins.

In a blink, the vendor has grabbed her wrist.

"Thief, now you come with money?!"

Heads perk up at the sound of thief. "Whose money?"

Ororo begins to cry. "My mother sent me," she sobs.

Calls of 'let her go', 'she's but a child'.

"This motherless dog stole from my cart not two weeks ago!"

Regretting the taamiya, Ororo bites the vendor on the thumb. Yelping, he releases her. She reaches for a bread but his hand is atop it blocking her. She grabs a whole cucumber and takes the vendors cutting knife. Dodging grasping arms, she escapes. She vanishes among the other denizens. Like many children, she runs. There is a wedding in progress in the alley. Red tents cover the alley-way. Red hangings hang from the wall. The alley is narrow. Wooden chairs are lined up alongside the walls. They are handing out meat, ghost most likely, to the less fortunate. Ororo scales the wall of the apartment building nearest her and lays out on the roof. There is no shade. It is very hot, but there is no moisture on the roof. The sun has already baked it off. Ororo eats her cucumber and watches the unmarried girls moving to the tabla beat. Their hands are clasped above their heads, and their hips move. Gyrate, thrust and sway. Possible grooms watch humbly from the walls. One particular girl, too slim for beauty, moves with a grace that reminds Ororo of Fatima, Basimah's second oldest sister. The men watching the girl twirl their mustaches and stroke their beards.

Someone will be married soon, Ororo judges.

When she climbs back down to street-level, and presents herself for some food, she is turned away. All that was set aside for the poor has been given away already, and there is no more food for a beggar to eat.

"At least give her a drop of milk," says an old Nubian, nearly blind. He had hauled water and built up fires the last two days in preparation of the wedding. The Nubian sees that she wears a dirt colored shirt that once belonged to a very thin man, but on her the shoulders come halfway down to her elbows. The sleeves had been ripped off, so the double-basting has begun to unravel. The shirt is belted with a tie. A filthy rag, multi-grease colored, is wrapped around her head. A colorful, woven ribbon, almost spotless, of blues and reds and yellows hangs from the makeshift turban. Ororo's callused feet, of course, are bare.

"Sit next to me, my child," he tells her. "Eat from my plate."

Ororo sits next to him. Ororo sits in his shadow, her legs drawn up to her chest. Her booty lies heavy against her stomach. She remembers her half of pumpkin turnover, and brings it out to share with him.

"Bless you child," he says. "I am Solomon abd-Farouk."

-0-

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